A Journey into the Great White North

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The Whole Friends Thing

Yesterday, I was talking to someone about how difficult it is to make friends in your 30’s. Maybe this isn’t a universal truth, but it’s certainly the case for me and a lot of the people I know. To be fair, I haven’t been trying very hard since arriving in Canada. There is more I could be doing: joining a kickball league (this has been suggested to me more than once, but I’m not even sure if kickball exists here?), take a writing class, etc. But I’m just so out of practice at the whole making friends thing that I think I’m lacking the skills necessary. I feel like I need to attend some sort of workshop: “Making Friends 101: How to Create Social Network in Three Easy Steps.”

I am still friends with people I’ve known since I was 12-18 years old. That’s 20 years of friendship in some cases (crazy!), which means you don’t have to provide any backstory or explanation about yourself. These people are my backstory. There’s no need to be the best version of myself because they’ve seen me at my best and at my worst and have still stuck around. There is so much comfort in having that stability.

So when I think about developing new friendships, I’m kind of at a loss. I have my husband and my puppy, but while they are fantastic I’m also someone who needs more than that to feel truly at home in a place. Whenever I’m out and I see groups of girlfriends having coffee or window shopping, I have a total Carrie Bradshaw-in-Paris moment (please tell me you know what I’m talking about) and I feel this ache in my gut. But then I think about having to develop new friendships and it makes me feel so overwhelmed. I know I need to be proactive about this, just not sure where to start.

There are expat groups and things like that here which might be a start? I may also take a cooking class or something . . .

Has anyone else had trouble meeting people when moving to a new city? Any tips?